1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of cellular telephones and more particularly to a cellular telephone system and method that includes a cellular telephone linked to a dedicated home station over an exclusive communications network.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The present invention relates to a cellular telephone system and method with smart application capability where settings, data and applications can be totally recovered if the phone is lost. A recent survey determined that a large percentage of cellular telephone users have experienced theft or loss of phones, either through theft, misplacement or destruction (such as dropping the phone into water). Prior art services exist to lock, erase, or backup private contact information on a cellular telephone if it is stolen, but they generally require a monthly charge. There are also devices and services to track a lost cellphone. Because much of the logic for smart applications (apps) is currently on the phone itself as well as almost complete contact data, there is no easy way to recover loaded applications or contact data if a phone is lost or destroyed. It would be advantageous to have a mobile phone that can act as though it were a smart phone, but is really directly tied to a home station (or synonymously a data center, home data center, data station or home data station) that stores and executes apps and saves data such as contact data (the home station may itself be mobile). If such a mobile phone were lost, only the basic shell is gone. All apps and personal data are on the home station. While there might be some risk to losing the home station in particular circumstances, the risk of losing a handset is much, much higher. Also, a home station can be backed up by methods well-known in the art.
Exclusive or dedicated communication between a local device and a mainframe or server has a long history. An early example is a mainframe receiving typewritten commands from a terminal or running a time-sharing service with hard-wired terminals. The hardware necessary for such a system, including a central processing unit and memory, was connected to the terminal by an RS-232 interface link or other hardwire system, and the terminal was more like an I/O device than a computer. Today, Universal Serial Bus (USB) serves the function of connecting a device to a central computer, and, if the device is a terminal, a communications link can be added for remote connections to the mainframe or other central computer or system.
The terminal/mainframe setup is an early example of what today is called a client-server system, where the client makes execution requests to the server, or sends/receives data to or from the server. Typically, a client/server setup describes a network with several clients and one server. In particular, this was an early example of a thin client, one which had very little processing power.
A thin client typically contains only functionality for a GUI (graphical user interface) and communications, while a thick client typically is able to also execute applications or business logic; a hybrid client shares some processing power with the server. Other terminology used to describe thin clients is Remote Presentation, where the presentation is on the client, or Distributed Presentation, where the presentation is partly on client, partly on server.
Mobile phones can be part of a network generally as clients. A mobile phone that has only graphical user interface (GUI) functionality and little else, often lacking a complex operating system, has been called a dumbphone. Some of these dumbphones with low power and long battery life are being manufactured for developing countries where the emphasis is on simply being able to make a telephone call. Typically a dumbphone with some added-on hardware options, such as camera or GPS, has been called a feature phone. A feature phone normally has only a minimal development API (applications interface), but does often include software such as email, personal information management (PIM), and a web browser.
The majority of prior art dumbphones provide only the capability to make a basic cellular telephone call with little or no browser or application capability. Prior art dumbphones and thin-clients do not generally provide, and do not typically allow, the user to control any of the phone's capabilities except things related to phone calls such as ring tones and volume. Hence, the owner has no control over the apps (if any) or data used by apps on the phone.
It would be extremely advantageous to have a thin-client cellular telephone system that appears to be smart to a user, but in reality is tightly aligned with one particular home station. This telephone could be connected to that particular server under the owner's exclusive control via the cellular telephone network and/or the Internet using an exclusive communication channel such as a VPN or IPSec tunnel.
Macaluso in U.S. Pat. No. 7,865,181 teaches searching for mobile content, querying a computer system for data, and downloading it.
Pedersen in U.S. Pat. No. 7,865,506—teaches a method and system for fetching content from a server in a cellular communication system
Byung Woo Min in U.S. Pat. No. 7,869,824—teaches a method of remote control of systems, for example in a home or vehicle, by a cellular telephone.
Wakasa, et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 7,881,709 teaches a system involving a controller that contributes to the execution of applications for a portable phone.
Remote access of one device into another has long been used to access applications such as email on a remote computer. What is badly needed is a system and method that will do more than just control applications on a remote computer or simply make telephone calls. It would be extremely advantageous to have a remote cellular telephone that could make telephone calls and that gives the user the appearance of having the functionality of a smartphone, but in reality, is tightly linked to a secure home station that contains the actual data, executes apps, browses the web and provides all the services and capabilities of a smart phone to the remote over an exclusive communication channel.